Since 1995, Andrea Packard (Cert. ’89) has directed the List Gallery at Swarthmore College, organizing and curating over 60 exhibitions. Before she became the director of the List Gallery, Packard co-founded Protean Gallery in Philadelphia with other PAFA alumni. “Working together, we learned a great deal about creating and presenting art,” says Packard.

Packard came to PAFA after completing a Bachelor of Art degree at Swarthmore College. “I was drawn to the fact that PAFA had a mature and diverse student body.” A fan of Thomas Eakins, Packard was also impressed that he designed some of the teaching spaces and studios at PAFA. “I believe that our physical environments teach us as much as our faculty and our peers. I was attracted to the architecture and the idea of working among great works of art.”

Packard won the Cresson Memorial Travel Scholarship while attending PAFA, and says that her travels to Greece, France, Italy and Spain remain a strong influence on her art to this day. In addition to traveling, Peter Paone and Dan Miller were two of the many PAFA faculty members and critics that informed her mixed media process. “Peter encouraged an experimental approach to drawing and to combining varied media. While taking woodcut with Dan, I began to incorporate printed fragments in my collage works and to compose through excavating as well as layering pigment and texture.”

Packard has shown her paintings, prints, sculptures, and mixed-media works in over fifty exhibitions in Connecticut, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. She now exhibits her work at The Painting Center, New York.